Sunday, 23 March 2014

It is nice to be able to put some Meconopsis on the site! It is still very cold here but at least it is sunny and this is warming the ground up enough to put dormant plants in growth. This is the hybrid between Meconopsis grandis and Meconopsis intergrifolia. In the last decade or so M. grandis has been shown to have at least 3 sub species and M. integrifolia too is variable and has been split with a new species M. pseudointegrifolia.M. x Beamishii is a fertile hybrid and I guess would be quadraploid to account for the fertility and given the variability of the parents, this too may well be in different forms - with perhaps new crosses made in future with some of the variations of the original parents. In growth, in flower and particularly in leaf of this looks like M. grandis is one parent. There is a different species called M. x Sarsonsii which is a cross between M. betonicifolia and M. integrifolia. I have recently received seed of this from Russia and hopefully this will eventually produce perennial plants and again the leaf should resemble that of M. betonicifolia.